http://movies.sky.com/dark-knight-rises-is-set-8-years-after-its-predecessor
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Thanks to the fine film hacks over at Empire, we finally have some actual news to accompany all those leaked pictures from the set of The Dark Knight Rises - and straight from the horse's mouth too.

Tellingly, the new film is set eight years after the end of The Dark Knight, when we saw our caped crusader take the blame for Two-Face's murders and fly like a fugitive into the night.

Director Christopher Nolan says of the plot: "It's really all about finishing Batman and Bruce Wayne's story. We left him in a very precarious place. Perhaps surprisingly for some people, our story picks up quite a bit later, eight years after The Dark Knight. So he's an older Bruce Wayne; he's not in a great state.

"With Bane, we're looking to give Batman a challenge he hasn't had before. With our choice of villain and with our choice of story we're testing Batman both physically as well as mentally."

Tom Hardy himself says of Bane: "He's brutal. Brutal. He's a big dude who's incredibly clinical, in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. It's not about fighting. It's about carnage. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed, it's nasty. Anything from small-joint manipulation to crushing skulls, crushing rib cages, stamping on shins and knees and necks and collarbones and snapping heads off and tearing his fists through chests, ripping out spinal columns. He is a terrorist in mentality as well as brutal action."

The Dark Knight Rises is out in cinemas on July 20, 2012.